An enhanced physical downlink control channel (e-PDCCH) may provide carrier aggregation (CA) enhancements, help support new carriers which may not be backwards compatible, reduce control channel capacity limitations of coordinated multipoint (CoMP) transmissions, and enhance DL MIMO. In wireless communication networks, such as Long Term Evolution (LTE), user equipments (UEs) may monitor both a common search space and a UE-specific search space in a control region. A search space may comprise a set of channel control element (CCE) locations where a UE may find its PDCCHs. One or more CCEs are used to transmit each PDCCH. Certain aspects provide methods and apparatus for determining a search space comprising a subset of CCEs located on a band edge of available frequency resources, and performing a search of the search space to decode at least one PDCCH.